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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6204858" data-attributes="member: 42582">I read your reference to "the adventure" - and the idea of challenges which have been planted and are "germane" to that - and I wonder what exactly it means.And this is not an attempt to trap you, or turn your words against you. It's a genuine curiosity - because I think I know what it means, but am not 100% certain.I don't know how well you remember the closing pages (before the appendices) of Gygax's PHB. But in them he talks about the players getting together ahead of the session, planning out which room or rooms in the dungeon they will hit - or, alternatively, planning a scouting expedition whose aim is not to hit any rooms but rather to note possible targets for future sessions - and then choosing appropriate PCs from their stable of PCs, equipping those PCs appropriately, and so on. And Gygax notes that, once play is underway, the GM will do his/her best to distract the players from their goals (eg via wandering monsters and tricks & traps), but the players need to do their best not to be distracted.In this sort of play, what is "the adventure"? There is a pre-planned location, but it is the players who are choosing the basic goal for the session, and the GM is providing antagonism - often in accordance with fairly strict rules around exploration, timekeeping and wandering monster checks - in opposition to that goal.Or, to shift to a rather different style of play (my own - which is not very Gygaxian): in the session I described upthread, to which I provided a link for more info, the players initiated an investigation of Orcus cultists, I followed their lead and narrated into being a hidden Orcus temple, and out of that followed a sequence of events that led rather unexpectedly to the PCs bringing ruin upon the citadel of their duergar allies. What was "the adventure"? There were PCs with goals; and there was a setting with some known elements (including recently-defeated Orcus cultists); but there was no pre-planned "adventure" - no sequence of events through which the players were intended to take their PCs.You are correct to link "indie" style to improvisation. The GM has to be ready to improvise, at a minimum, outcomes to conflicts and then new conflicts that build on those outcomes. Possibly also antagonists. Possibly also allies. Possibly also environments. This is why the techniques for games intended to support this sort of play include robust support for this sort of improvisation. (In 4e, this can be seen in things like: charts to quickly build level-appropriate monsters; charts to build level-appropriate traps; charts for level-appropriate DCs and damage; guidelines on adjudicating unexpected manouevres in skill challenges (better handled in DMG2 than the DMG); a thematically strong but not-too-convoluted default cosmology that makes it easy to identify and clearly frame new antagonists; etc.)One thing that 4e has not much of, but that other games intended to be played this way have more of, is mechanical devices to offload the improvisation onto the players - eg on a successful knowledge check the player gets to dictate the relevant backstory; on a failed check the GM gets to dictate it, in a fashion that will be in some way adverse to the players' desire for his/her PC in the particular situation.</blockquote>

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